Mary J. Schleppegrell

Professor; Chair of Educational Studies

Mary Schleppegrell's research explores the relationship between language and learning with a focus on students for whom English is a second language. A linguist, she uses systemic functional linguistics to link meaning and language structure in ways that illuminate issues in education. Her research projects investigate the ways language can be an explicit focus of instruction to provide meaningful support for students across school subjects and levels.

Currently, she is engaged in a three-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Education Sciences, "The iterative development of modules to support teachers’ engagement in Exploring Language and Meaning in Text with English language learners," with co-PI Annemarie Palincsar. Using an approach based on functional grammar, they are developing a curriculum that prepares teachers of grades 2-5 to analyze the texts in their grade-level literacy programs and identify ways to focus students on the language choices an author has made as a means of exploring connections between form and meaning and helping English language learners learn how English works. Her interests also extend to other disciplinary areas, and her recent book, with Zhihui Fang, Reading in Secondary Content Areas: A Language-Based Pedagogy (2008, University of Michigan Press) draws on her ten years' engagement with the California History Project and other professional development contexts to support secondary teachers in learning about the challenges of language across content areas. Her book The Language of Schooling: A Functional Linguistics Perspective (2004, Erlbaum) describes the theoretical framing of this work and delineates the challenges students face across the curriculum in engaging with the language expected in school subjects.

She teaches courses on linguistic analysis, linguistics in education, and second-language development.

Chang, Peichin, and M.J. Schleppegrell. (2011). Taking an effective authorial stance in academic writing: Making the linguistic resources explicit for L2 writers in the social sciences. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 10(3), 140-151.